When Dreams Are Put On Hold

From a young age, Khalida* had a knack for finance and numbers. Her mother often turned to her for advice on managing the family budget. Khalida's passion grew into an ambition to study economics.

For three years, Khalida prepared for the Kankor, Afghanistan’s national university entrance exam which thousands of students across the country sit every year. She skipped family events, weddings and parties. “I practically cut myself off from society to focus on study,” she told The Persistent. 

The hard work paid off, and Khalida enrolled at a top Afghan university in the economics department. She was thrilled; she was finally on her way to building the life she wanted. “I had dreamed of following a career in banking,” she shared. 

But the dream wasn’t to be.

Three semesters into her course, and a year and half after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August 2021, women were barred from attending universities. The decree was released on Dec. 21, 2022. Many women, including Khalida, showed up for class the next day, but were turned away at the university gates.

 At just 22-years old, Khalida felt her life was over. 

“All those long nights poring over books…I didn’t think that one day it could all be taken away from me. I was shocked and depressed,” she recalled.

‘Shocked and Depressed’

For a long time, Khalida held on to hope that perhaps, just maybe, the Taliban might change course, and the university would reopen its doors to her. But last year, she watched her male classmates graduate and it was so painful. “The earth didn’t have room for me, when I saw their photos on social media,” she said, quoting an Afghan saying:

“Zamin barayee man jay nadashat.”

Relief—if one may call it that—came in an unexpected way. In Feb. 2024, faced with a severe shortage of female nurses, the Taliban’s public health officials convinced leadership to permit a small number of women to train as nurses and midwives. 

Within days of the decision, tens of thousands of women applied to study nursing and midwifery at private institutes across the country; the deluge of applications less a reflection of countless aspiring nurses than a reflection of smart, ambitious Afghan women looking for a way—almost any way—to have a professional career, earn a living and contribute to society.

Khalida was among them. Like many others, she applied as a way to continue her education, and do something meaningful with her life after all other avenues had been blocked. 

“Truth be told … I had no aptitude or interest in medicine,” she admitted. But after studying it for a year, it grew on her. It even brought her joy.

And that’s what made the next blow so very devastating. Almost as quickly as the Taliban opened up the opportunity for women, it shut it back down.

In December 2024, the Taliban announced a ban on women enrolling in nursing and midwifery institutes. “Just as the universities closed and did not open again, I think the nursing institutes will not be opened either,” Khalida said. She had been in her fourth semester. 

A Silent Epidemic

The bans have contributed to a silent epidemic playing out among Afghanistan’s young women: Mental health experts are seeing an increasing number of girls experiencing a range of mental health concerns directly related to the restrictions placed on their rights and freedoms. 

“Most of our clients are young girls who come with mental health problems such as stress and anxiety that is emerging from the pause in their education since the ban on schools and universities” said Mehrieh Qadiri, a practicing psychologist from northern Afghanistan.

Qadiri said that even though access to and awareness of psychotherapy in Afghanistan is generally very low, in the last three years her clinic has seen a 50% increase in women patients, mostly young girls forced out of school and universities.

“The girls who come to us say, ‘we are getting older every day and we are missing out on our studies’—they are worried about their future,” she explains. “It is difficult to provide support sometimes because we don’t know what the future will be,” she added.

For many girls, Qadiri says, the longer they stay out of school, the higher the likelihood they’re forced into marriage. “We have many cases of girls who had suicidal thoughts or tried to take their own life [over being forced to drop out of school], but after one or two failed attempts, their parents brought them to a psychologist,” she explained.

Research bears this out: A report by the Human Rights Watch, published in February 2024, observed “that since the Taliban takeover, one in two Afghans has experienced stress, anxiety, or other forms of psychological distress as a result of political violence, instability, and poverty.” 

It is worse for women, the HRW report noted. “Healthcare workers have reported that many women and girls seeking treatment for other conditions also report feeling anxiety, stress, and other mental health concerns related to restrictions on their freedom of movement and other rights abuses. Women also said their mental health was being affected by experiences of poverty,” the report stated.

A Crisis for Women’s Health

Meanwhile the healthcare crisis gets worse.

Maternal healthcare in Afghanistan was precarious even before the Taliban takeover; the country ranked among the worst in maternal mortality—620 women dying for every 100,000 live births—in 2020, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

By 2023, one woman in Afghanistan was dying every two hours because of a lack of access to healthcare, according to the UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. According to data shared by UNFPA, a UN agency monitoring women’s access to healthcare, Afghanistan currently needs an additional 18,000 skilled midwives.

“Preventing women from training in these fields means that in a few years' time, perhaps in a year or two even, all clinics and hospitals in the remote areas will be forced to close down due to a lack of female healthcare staff,” warned Fauzia Koofi, a former Afghan parliamentarian and staunch critic of the Taliban. And when the medical services of Afghanistan collapse, women and children will be its first victims, Koofi added.

'Hopeless and Anxious'

Salma* is a 22-year-old university graduate. She took up midwifery courses as a teenager, and had been working as a nurse alongside her university education in computer science. After the Taliban takeover, and in response to the closure of universities, she began working full-time as a midwife and also trained to teach nursing.

Salma was devastated when the ban was announced. It was the end to her teaching career, a vocation she had been so fond of. “Losing the opportunity to teach and grow has left me feeling hopeless and anxious about my future,” she said.

But most of all, Salma was heartbroken for her students. “Many of them cried and said they felt like their dreams were destroyed," she said. "One of my best students, who wanted to become a midwife in her village, told me she felt like her future was lost. She had worked hard to convince her family to let her study, but now she is trapped at home,” she said. “The ban didn’t just stop their education; it took away their dreams and confidence,” she added.

This isn’t the first time the Taliban has blocked medical education for women. When the insurgent group took control of the country in the 1990s they did the same thing. But this time it’s worse, said Koofi, the former politician, who was a medical student herself in the 1990s. “The first time they were in power…they banned the course for first and second year medical students, but they allowed the rest of us to graduate,” she recalled.

Indeed, for women who lived through the previous Taliban regime in the 1990s, the recent bans are an all-too-painful repeat of history. “My mother was forced to quit her middle school education the last time the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan and had to give up on her dreams,” shared Khalida. “She was determined to not let me experience the same fate, and was the one who motivated me to enroll in the nursing course when the opportunity arose,” she shared. 

“But now I wonder why should I even motivate myself anymore? It’s really hard, and not worth the effort because they are doing everything in their power to prevent us from learning,” she said.

Educating a Girl

The issue of girl’s education remains sensitive, even within the Taliban ranks, with some leaders seeing the merit of educating women and girls, even if only to fill a much-needed gap in sectors that are heavily gender-segregated in the Afghan society. 

This internal opposition, however, is not very strong, and any criticism of the Taliban supreme leader’s decisions has been viewed as mutinous. Earlier this month, the Taliban’s deputy foreign minister Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai was forced to leave the country after having publicly advocated for reversing the ban on girl’s education.

At this point, what keeps Khalida going is the spirit of fellow Afghan women. “There were girls in my nursing course who had experienced great economic hardships to be there. They traveled from remote parts of the country, some as far as from Badakhshan on the Afghanistan-China border. They sold their jewelry, used their savings and even borrowed money to pay for their school, in the hope they would enter job market someday and support their families,” she shared. 

“It was hard for all of us, but it was harder for them," Salma said, speaking of her students. They were in tears, and it was for them I wanted to be brave. I tell them to not give up, that there is always light after periods of darkness. There has to be,” Salma said.

*Some names have been changed to protect the identities of women inside Afghanistan.